Winner: The Strokes
It was 82 degrees outside, probably 90 in the direct sunlight that I was standing in. Broken Bells was wrapping up their set, and though I had seen them earlier this year and wasted $35 on a disappointing House of Blues show, I was still standing in their crowd and I wasn’t leaving. But so was everybody else, as people began to lay out blankets and sit on the beer and trash soaked asphalt, marking their spot for The Strokes. And by everybody else, I mean everybody else. After my hour long wait, in which my friends lapsed into 3 steadily growing meeker singalongs of ‘Someday’, we finally stood up with the rest of the crowd. I was face to sweaty back with a pack of bros, there was barely any air at my 5’3 height and in standing on my tiptoes to try to get a breath in, I wobbled and collided into the tangle of arms and legs behind me.
So maybe ‘hype’ isn’t the best word for it, and ‘lack of air space’ is better, but The Strokes still made it worthwhile. I heard rumors of the state that Julian Casablancas was in in his long awaited return to the stage (“He’s all fat and old now, man.”), but in his summery blue Hawaiian shirt, shaggy black bang glory, he did look a little aged this is true, but nonetheless still full of that effortless coolness that The Strokes built their empire on. They chose their set selection wisely, calming down the over excited mass of people by opening with songs off of the less popularly received Angles and Comedown Machine albums, and then they delivered the good stuff – “12:51”, “Hard To Explain”, “The End Has No End”, “Last Nite”, “Whatever Happened” and of course “New York City Cops”, to name a few – all of the hits that everybody desired to hear were excellently performed, with all of the glory of the first time that we listened to them years and years ago. I’ve listened to “Someday” honestly probably once a month since I was 17, but I never thought I would be able to see it live. So when the bright opening chords ripped through the speakers and the enormous crowd cheered instantly with recognition, it was a truly fascinating and glorious experience and ultimately, a celebration of good music the inexplicable feelings that come with it.
The Pitch Perfect Award
Winner: Jack White
Jack White proved that deities truly come in all forms – the Rock God took to the main stage in a cool blue light, which reflected his pale skin, dark hair, and white flowered shirt. He was truly the reincarnate of 70s rock Gods past, shredding his guitar with sexy, powerful and electrifying chords as plumes of smoke exploded behind him. He performed several songs off of Lazaretto, including a haunting and powerful performance of “High Ball Stepper”. As White was one of the of the biggest acts of the festival, he seriously did not disappoint. He was wild and unbridled on the guitar, barely pausing to take a break during his hour and a half set. And of course, he played all of the hits from The White Stripes glory, and not only that – he tweaked and reworked them into special live versions, he amped up the tempo of “We are going to be Friends” into a sweet, blue grassy version, added extra guitar snarl to “The Hardest Button to Button” and even performed “Steady As She Goes.” He exhibited a truly refreshing performance of musical glory, talent, and innovation.
—Helen Chen
The Dion And The Belmonts Award For “Best Backing Band”
Winner: Chance the Rapper
I’ll let my other staff writers fawn over the closest thing we have to a raspy James Brown in today’s music world, but Chance’s absolutely electric show couldn’t have happened without the strength of his ridiculous backing band. Special shouts to trumpet extraordinaire Nico Segal, who has a fantastic mixtape of his own here (http://www.okayplayer.com/news/nico-segal-donnie-trumpet-ep-mp3.html).
Chance the Rapper (plus band) could bring soul to the desert. They could bring funk to the Justice Department. They could bring the party to a morgue. They did all of that, and then some. Chance himself was wringing sweat out of his impeccable Superman t-shirt from the second track on, deservedly so. He moves so quick and so wonderfully that you don’t care the audience has to fill in the last words of every track.
But the fact that they did so signified a huge achievement for Chance (something that he also recognized): everyone knows his songs now. Before this festival, his mixtapes 10 Day and Acid Rap were blog smashes and magazine cover-earning works, but at his non-Chicago shows, they failed to reach the level of memorization. I’m saying this because even he noted that everyone was screaming this shit back at him. It was glorious. It was beautiful. I didn’t know any of it, of course, because I’m an idiot. But it was beautiful. I can’t think of a better rapper (and backing band) to be on the escalator to Superstardom, on Level 2.
— Marc Finn
The ‘Started from the Bottom’ Award
Winner: Chance The Rapper
I remember when Chance The Rapper released his Acid Rap mixtape last summer. My friends in both California and Boston alike had began murmuring about him and I could feel a steady stir beginning to amp up about the rapper’s almost ‘acidic’ sounding rapping – by the nasaly high registers that he dips into bar after bar in his songs. How surreal it was, a year later, to hear the song that my friends had ripped off of datpiff.com out of lack of being on youtube or spotify, performed to a massive crowd at Gov Ball and not only that, to which every audience member seemed to know every word and was yelling it with feverish devotion. Every one of Chance’s songs was well received and recognized – even his cover of the ‘Arthur’ theme song.
— Helen Chen
The Jackie Chan Award For “Best Stunt”
Winner: Diarrhea Planet
In a festival full of fantastic amateur stuntmen/stuntwomen, (shouts to the kid who somehow, against all odds, punched my ankle while falling down. That’s right, punched my ankle. You had to be there) the award for Best Stunt easily goes to Diarrhea Planet, especially to guitarist Evan Bird for climbing to heights unseen. Go to 3:10 of this video to see why:
DP brought the ruckus to the early Saturday crowd (as they put it, “Why the fuck are you people even awake right now?”), mixing in their incredible high energy with off-the-cuff Outkast covers and fantastic participation from the security crew. Aside from the ankle-puncher, the crowd was great, and happy as ever. More stunts, DP. Keep stuntin’.
The Thick-Cut Sirloin Steak Award For “Beefiest Crowd”
Winner: Disclosure
Ever hear of something called Hadrian’s Wall? Hadrian’s Wall was a wall spanning the length of England, built to keep the Roman Empire safe from invaders to the north. Bits of Hadrian’s Wall still stand today, and it remains a popular tourist destination in the UK.
But if the Romans had electronic duo Disclosure in their possession, and paid them a ridiculous sum of money/alcohol/substances to keep the party going for X number of years, they could have saved a lot of labor. This crowd was, in a word, impenetrable. Not even the patented “follow the huge frat guy into the throng” strategy was working, and that move got me to the front of Sleigh Bells with ease. Spare text messages between three friends, all stuck in various parts of the Honda Stage crowd flittered into my phone like desperate carrier pigeons, each saying something along the lines of, “I can’t move,” or “‘Help Me Lose My Mind’ shouldn’t be this dusty.”
Disclosure themselves, actually, were kind of underwhelming. It wasn’t just the crowd, but the acoustics for the Honda Stage seemed a bit off-kilter for the act, surprising since it handled Earl Sweatshirt, Skrillex, and other such sounds with ease. Others felt it too, judging by conversations throughout the weekend. Not a bad show, certainly, but perhaps one that had been overrated (though, I’m not ruling out the excessive heat as a contributor here). Still, though. That crowd was like March of the Penguins-level unreachable, and Disclosure have to be commended for drawing it.